Back to School! (Finally)

Six weeks.

That's how much school the littles missed during the course of our move.

So their first day of school was a random Wednesday in late Sept and they may or may not have had such things as pencils, paper, backpacks, etc.... (Ok, here's my dirty little secret... This picture was their second day of school. Shhhh...)

But they got there. Nervous, uncertain, apprehensive, but they got there. I wondered how they'd all do thru the day. Xandri had a field trip to start off with.

When I left after dropping them off, Roman had been surrounded by about 6 little boys, 2-3 of whom claimed knowing him from church (so glad we went that Sunday!); Avril was deep in conversation with another girl walking down the soccer field; Xandri was hugging herself in the field trip bus line looking lonely and scared and worried.... My heart broke a little bit for that one! So naturally I was a bit worried about their day.

When they got home on the bus though, they were all smiles, full of energy and excitement and stories about their day and new friends. I loved hearing it (all at once lol) and was so relieved to hear what a good day and what new friends they made. I think living in a military town will be a good experience for them!

Three Baby Mice

We're working on respecting other's space and property. You know, like not walking into someone's house and immediately looking behind all closed doors and opening up all their cupboards to see all their stuff. Or in this case going through the big basement room and looking through Uncle Nic's stuff. 

On the other hand, this behavior may have its pros. They managed to find 3 baby mice- which I'm sure Nic is delighted to be without. 

Well, technically they found 6... but only 3 were still squeaking upon discovery. The others received a quick and painless garbage can burial. 

Grandpa wasn't really a fan of them if we're being honest. His vote was to kill em all- pronto! My sweet little animal activists were too delighted by their cuteness of course, so we made them a little cardboard graham cracker box house with grass inside for them to nest in. Then we gave them some rice and some leftover oatmeal, which they chowed down on. I even carved a little mouse water bowl out of a watermelon rind. Yep, we pulled out all the stops for Baby Mouse Hotel. 

I even promised them we could take them home and keep them as pets. 

I figured they likely wouldn't survive that long. 

They were totally enamored. Always checking on them, oo-ing and ah-ing every time they moved or ate or blinked or snuggled up with each other. They were pretty darn cute.

Unfortunately while we were playing with them outside, one scrambled around Xandri's hand and fell- pretty far and hard- to land on the sidewalk. It lay and twitched for a bit, but seemed to recover a little. We put him back in the box and tried to nurse him a bit. 

He did well with his siblings... but then they escaped (they were outside at the time, don't worry Grandpa) and he was on his own. The next morning we found him- he didn't make it thru the night. 

The kids were fairly upset... but they also moved on pretty quickly. They were happy to have played with them and happy that they were safely away from that mean Grandpa who wanted them dead! So all's well that ends well I guess... We'll see how long we last without adopting some other creature(s)!